


Paris

by anatsuno



Category: lotrips
Genre: Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-06
Updated: 2003-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno/pseuds/anatsuno





	Paris

*

You're in Paris, taking the _Métro_ from some place to some other.  
You love it, really, not only the freedom that _pedus incognito_ in foreign land brings, but the particular feel, smell and topography of it. You know the map quite well, even if your relationship with the town is a very on-and-off thing, but you know it with colors for the lines and those have changed on the modernized versions of the maps, which leaves you a bit lost.

Parisians use the numbers for them, like you do in New York (the 14 the 9 the 4 in place of the A the F the J), or they take the time to name the two extremities of the line, an idiosyncrasy, one of these oddly impractical things locals will do in any place around the world but which still strikes you as very, _charmingly_ French. For you it's the mustard line, that little nearly straight mustard dash to go to Belleville, or the red slash of the Clignancourt-Orléans line for Châtelet or Barbès or the haven that is the Quartier Latin. (All these impossible names to pronounce, printed so neatly in your mind but rolling off your tongue wrapped in unease and self-consciousness.)

Often while standing on the platform you'll be able to see the headlights of the arriving train while it still is in the tunnel, not like with the London Tube where so many of the stations have curved platforms, which block everything but two of the cars from one's view.  
For some reason this second of train rushing in the darkness, coming out of it to welcome you aboard, feels precious like an allowed glimpse in the near future and on demand déjà-vu.  
In the car, at least in the older models, there's always one of these folding seats alone in the far corner, right near the door instead of bundled with a twin backed to the real, badly cushioned seats.  
You love that lonely folding thing, because it speaks to you of distracted lovers dreaming of their too distant hearts (halves), of geeks and loners sitting isolated from the other kids, of shy women keeping their bags too close to their legs like Theft in person is sitting right in front of them. You always want to sit right there when you're alone, and today's no exception. You sit down with secret glee, like it's a privilege that life gave you, and maybe it is.

You have memories of the Métro, already - you two go back aways. Not from these biz trips when premieres and galas make it so that limos always take you somewhere you can't even place on the map, somewhere posh and flashy where the cameras will be waiting, no. With those you hardly have a chance to recognize the town, Berlin, Tokyo, London or Paris not even a different flavor except maybe the fabric beneath you in the luxury car - leather in Europe (Berlin black, Paris grey, London red) or Eastern silky velvet. L.A. is usually white leather or striped/scaly fake animal skin, tiger, alligator, but L.A. is pretty much home so it's different, really.

No. You remember Paris and its Métro from an earlier holiday, an actual holiday with an older cousin and an aunt, a few years back. 14, 15? Yeah, maybe 15, September for sure. It was fun, doing all the normal touristy stuff, and more fun of course to hang out with the cousin's French friends, real indigenous people - those know the good stuff.  
There's this one time you rode alone at 5.30 am on the first train of the day, mind filled with visions of warm buttery croissants with your eyes closed but beaming with pride when they were open. Not your first time, no, but your first _French_ time _oooh yes_, and you felt so special to still be dirty-icky sex-messy under your jeans, recognizing as if from outside the potency of the infamous afterglow. Playing with the tiny stripe of curled hair you knew was stuck with dried come and smiling sun-blindingly to grumpy workers and the occasional party-goers, you knew the world was your oyster then.

You've never stopped feeling like it is, and wandering alone in Paris in the milling crowd to finish the day riding in this Métro car right now, more alive than you've been in a long time of press junkets and award ceremonies, you feel it more. The joy of it clings to your skin with pollution and sweat, presses on you like so many golddust motes. It's simple, really, and you decide to call it _happy in Paris_.

You are.

*


End file.
